Being a snob is a unique kind of pleasure. The momentary lapse of superiority you experience putting on a condescending smile and looking down on plebs around is incomparable. The dead silence you hear after “Breton cider is just tasteless compared to Norman” feels like a well deserved victory. Bonus points for pronouncing the toponyms with French accent.

Snobbery is one of the most achievable enjoyments you can have. It doesn’t require any specific skills or knowledge: you don’t even need to actually be a picky consumer, it’s enough to be perceived as such. You don’t have to watch all those Hungarian art-house movies, just learn the director names and make up a couple of facts about their cultural influence.

No one likes you as a snob, even other snobs, but that’s fine. Get used to it, be proud of it. Masses are too primitive to appreciate anything spectacular, including you. That’s your life now, embrace it. Like a good V60 drip brewed from washed Ugandan robusta, you’re not for everyone.

Choosing a proper niche for an act of snobbery is a subtle art. You want to choose a domain universally perceived as elite but not accidentally step onto a topic someone next to you actually knows about. Analyse the crowd carefully and don’t show off your aesthetic standards to a bunch of art school alumni, as there is nothing more humiliating for a snob than being caught as fraud. You will master it, believe in yourself.

If you need some inspiration to get started, try the following:

• When a friend shares their favourite song, respond with “That’s not exactly Mahler but will do”. Some friends will never send you any more music after that, but others will start trying to impress you even harder than before. Remember: as a snob, you want to maximise the amount of people of the second type around you.
• In a restaurant, spend at least five minutes asking the waiter about wines. Essential words to use: tannins, acidity, first nose, cured leather. After exhausting the waiter’s patience, pucker up for a moment and ask for a glass of water. This way, you not only make an impression of a sophisticated person but also save some money, so double benefit here.
• In a company, try saying a random out-of-place phrase in the middle of conversation. “Rome has never really fell but will”; “Just a small fish who wanted to be a whale”; “Eternity grows in silence”. Any phrase, get creative. When silence falls down and everyone stares on you, raise your brows and say “Seriously, no one? Laughter in the Dark by Nabokov? Come on, folks…”

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Soundtrack

Raices IV — compilation by Northallsen Records, nordic tribal dub techno for all digital pagans out there.